Orlando

Wearing Ann Taylor.

Peter Outerbridge in the 1999 Canadian film Better Than Chocolate.

Keys to the Queendom, too!

Wearing Mercedes Salaza r earrings, Tabitha Simmons sandals, Ronny Kobo top and skirt.

Fred Kovert (right) in the 1925 silent film Chasing the Chaser.

Saturday night's alright for fighting

Wearing Caroline Constas blouse, Frame slacks and Ericsson Beamon earrings.

All-male cast on stage in The Golden Girls.

Why Femulate?

Stana, 1976

Growing up, I was the neighborhood effeminate boy. I did not choose to be feminine; my feminine persona was natural, not an affection.

Whenever I acted on the advice to "man up," it felt so unnatural and uncomfortable that I invariably returned to my natural feminine ways, which were not a good fit for a young American male circa 1960. As a result, I was a favorite object of bullies and suffered through a lot of abuse in my youth. And having the breasts of a young woman did not help. My B-cups just added fuel to the fire being stoked by my peers.

In the early '60s, I became fascinated by the glamorous women who were no ladies, but rather female impersonators, as depicted in the 82 Club ads appearing in New York City newspapers. Eventually that fascination motivated me to began experimenting with female impersonation myself using my mother's and sister's wardrobes whenever I was home alone.

After honing my skills in private for almost half a decade, I had to let the girl out of the confines of the closet. So on Halloween 1969 I borrowed my sister's purple mini-dress, black mid-heel pumps, black tights, wiglet and knit beige cap. I wore minimal makeup. Although I had been wearing my mother's and sister's foundation garments in secret for years, I skipped the bra and girdle because I did not think they would appreciate me wearing such personal items.

I drove around town visiting a few friends and relatives, who were amused by my costume. I don't know if I passed, but I did not care. I was having the time of my life! All I cared about was that I was out in public living a few hours as the young woman I had discovered and nourished for the past few years.

Wearing ONE by Honey Bunch.

Womanless wedding, circa 1950.

Why Womanless?

By Starla

Long time Femulate readers will recall regular contributor Starla, who perused online high school yearbooks and clipped any womanless events she found memorialized in those volumes. (You can view her collection of clips here.) 

Awhile back, I posted Starla's theory regarding her reasoning for the existence and popularity of womanless beauty pageants. In light of Tuesday's post and the on-going interest in womanless events, I thought it apropos to rerun Starla's post for anyone who might have missed it. 

Those of you who have followed Stana’s blog for any length of time know that she shares my obsession with “civilian” womanless beauty pageants. It has been fascinating for me to seek out and discover many of these increasingly elaborate events as they have evolved over the last few years.

What has fascinated and intrigued me is that in recent years, the vast majority of the most elaborate and “realistic” pageants (in which the goal is to faithfully mimic girls and not to make fun of them with grotesque parodies), especially at the high school and middle school levels (and even occasionally elementary school), tend to take place in just two states: Alabama and Mississippi.

Yes, in two of the most religious and conservative states in the union, where gays and trans people encounter hostility and harsh judgment, people seem willing and eager to parade their tween and teen sons on a stage in up-to-date gowns, excellent wigs or natural hairstyles, perfect makeup, and high heels, and revel in the event.

Yet the cruel irony is that if any of those same young boys came home one day and announced that they were trans and want to actually become girls, those same parents would probably be horrified!

From a purely geographic standpoint, it’s not hard to imagine this phenomenon being concentrated in certain areas. After all, it's not unusual for any school fundraising or spirit building event to spread from school to nearby school. In this case, it’s also telling that while womanless pageants are held throughout the South, the few really top-notch and realistic events outside of Alabama and Mississippi tend to take place in border areas adjacent to those states.

A good example is the annual pageant held at Ernest Ward Middle School, which is in the extreme northwest panhandle of Florida, just a few miles from the Alabama border. (Here in Florida, we tend to say that culturally, everything north of Gainesville is really Georgia and everything west of Tallahassee is really Alabama!)

The degree of attention to detail and realism in some of these pageants is remarkable. One recently discovered Mississippi event (in Kozciusko) had a dress shop owner bragging on her Facebook page that she had supplied dresses to four of the young male entrants in a local pageant (including her own 14-year-old son who, she proudly announced, had won the pageant). No thrift shop bargains or hand-me-downs – these were current fashions.

In many womanless events elsewhere, footwear tends to be male shoes, flip-flops, or bare feet. In these Deep South pageants, the boys almost uniformly wear stylish high heels and, judging from the ease with which they walk in them, they have practiced in them for some time. We’re talking about 3-to-4 inch heels on some of these! How many 12 to 16-year-old boys do you know who can walk gracefully in heels?

Makeup is done lavishly and professionally – one tween boy in an Alabama pageant looked like he had gotten a full M•A•C makeover. Nails are almost always painted – some even wear fake nails. A few of the pictures I’ve found show boys in open-toed shoes and it is apparent that their toenails have also been nicely painted. (This is the sort of obsessive detail that most audience members wouldn’t even be able to see from their vantage point.) 

The outfits are nicely accessorized with earrings, necklaces, bracelets, even rings. Not grandma’s old junk jewelry – stuff that would look right at home on any female pageant contestant.

And the parents – these same parents who trash Caitlyn Jenner on their Twitter feeds or fight to keep transgender students from using gender-appropriate bathrooms (if they allow trans kids at all in their schools), or encourage county clerks to ignore the SCOTUS ruling and refuse marriage licenses to gay couples, nevertheless revel proudly (and often, not ironically or jokingly) in their son winning or placing high in a womanless event. They will brag on how pretty their son looked and how they looked totally feminine. While simultaneously, their Facebook accounts feature hunting trips, NASCAR, scripture quotations, and proud, defiant and conspicuous display of the rebel flag.  

What’s going on here? 

Well, maybe they truly see no irony. For them, dressing in drag for a womanless pageant is a fun frolic, a tradition, an innocent pastime having no relation to those heathen LGBT folks. It’s even a sort of rite of passage – I’ve seen more than one parent or grandparent congratulate their young’un on his “first” womanless pageant. (Implying that there will be more to come.)

But the lengths to which they take these things! I’ve corresponded with a fellow womanless beauty pageant enthusiast who has even attended some of these events and talked to some of the parents. Believe it or not, in the most extreme examples, they have worked for weeks on finding the perfect dress, experimenting with makeup, and drilling their son in pageant deportment. This is not something they throw together two days before the event – this is serious business to many!

I strongly suspect that many of the mothers who go all-out for these events are established “pageant Moms” who have daughters who compete. Then when it’s Johnny’s turn to be “prettied up,” they just apply the same level of intensity and attention to detail to their boys as they do to their girls. 

Or they may be “wannabes” – I’ve noted a few cases in which a Mom freely admitted that they had no daughters and despaired of ever having the fun of preparing their kin for a pageant – until their son’s school held such an event and they were able to lavish their machinations on him! Beauty pageants, especially child pageants are big in the Deep South – it should perhaps not be surprising that much of this enthusiasm and borderline fanaticism spills over into the womanless pageant world.

As for the realism of the femulations, that, too, may be explainable. 

Traditionally, the South has viewed their girls and women with an inordinate degree of chivalry, seeing them as precious gems to be honored and celebrated for their femininity. To lampoon girls in a womanless pageant with an exaggerated and homely burlesque of the “fairer sex” would be anathema to them. If their boys are going to portray girls for an evening, they will do so in a way that honors and celebrates their beauty and special status.

What about the young men and boys who don female garb for these events? Well, in the region in question, they seem to enjoy the experience for the most part. This doesn’t necessarily signify anything profound. Dressing up for a womanless pageant is not going to turn a boy trans, though it may help to confirm and solidify an existing propensity or desire to crossdress in someone who’s already wired that way and provides a safe and fun way to indulge those stirrings in a socially acceptable context.

However one theorizes about this phenomenon, it is a fascinating window on the unique and contradictory culture of Dixie!

(A big thank you to Stan Jones for the womanless pageant photos used in this post.)

Wearing Keepsake.

A contestant in a recent womanless beauty pageant.

Run Through The Jungle

I finally got around to watching Jurassic World. It was an entertaining film with great special effects.

Kudos go to actress Bryce Dallas Howard who wore Sam Edelman Nude Camdyn 3-1/2-inch pumps throughout the adventure including a run through the jungle with dinosaurs at her heels.

When the film came out last summer, there was some controversy about her choice of footwear. Ms.
Howard had this to say about that.

"From a logical standpoint I don’t think she would take off her heels. I don’t think she would choose to be barefoot. I don’t think she would run faster barefoot in the jungle with vines and stones... I’m better equipped to run when I have shoes on my feet. So that’s my perspective on it. I don’t think she would carry around flats with her. I think she’s somebody who could sprint a marathon in heels."

In my youth, I occasionally ran in heels (to dodge traffic), but that was on pavement, not on grass! Walking on grass without sinking my heels into the dirt is hard enough. I can't imagine running on grass in my Louboutins!

Wearing Self-Portrait.

Model Dave Castiblanco

Any Womanless Femulators?

Womanless events bring out the curious among us (including myself) who wonder if any of the participants belong to our team.

In almost every womanless event, there are one or two "girls" participating who are outstanding... so outstanding that you wonder if it was really their first time... rather than being a civilian, are they actually one of us. Or they may be first timers, but their experience releases their inner girl and they so enjoy being a girl that they become one of us.

Saturday's post revived those thoughts around here and I wonder if there is any truth to them. So are any of you readers past participants of a civilian non-trans womanless event?

If you were a beauty queen or a fashion model or a bridesmaid in a civilian womanless event I would love to hear and share your story and photos (I just know that you have photos.)

Or is there really nothing to our urban legends?

(I asked this same question in February 2015 and the response was a little underwhelming. One person admitted to participating en femme in an adult prom fundraiser and another was an 8-year-old chorus "girl" in a summer camp production of Oklahoma, but no one admitted to being in a womanless beauty pageant, fashion show, wedding.)

Wearing Helmut Lang tank, Self-Portarit skirt, IRO jacket and Chloe clutch.

Contestants in a recent womanless beauty pageant.

Candid Camera

During the past few days, I received unsolicited photos from people attending the awards dinner at Hamvention. I appreciated the photos because my iPhone photos from the event were not the best, (and I am still kicking myself in the dupa for not using my Canon Powershot camera, which was buried in my purse).

There are some nice photos in the batch I received, but I think my favorite is the candid shot above taken by a famous ham radio operator from Sweden. At the time, I was deep in thought going over my acceptance speech in my head and unaware that a photo was being taken.

I love Lucy's suit!

Ken Chan in Destiny Rose on Philippines television.

Too Busy Being Girly

Wearing Yigal Azrouel.

Oliver Thornton and Maulik Pancholy in a 2016 stage production of The Taming of the Shrew.

No Girls Allowed in 1970

There are numerous videos online depicting various womanless events – beauty pageants, fashion shows and weddings, in which males trade in their trousers for dresses and walk on the distaff side of street temporarily. Most of the online videos are contemporary, but there are a few vintage videos, too.

Zoe alerted me to one from 1970 featuring 28 members of a Boy Scout troop from Henry County, Virginia, who participated in a girl-less beauty pageant, which begins at approximately the 24 second mark of the video.

Don’t you just love the styles the “girls” are wearing? Reminds me of some of the outfits I was borrowing from my mother and sister back then.

Wearing Lands' End.

Miss David Bowie